Reflections
One Family of Humankind, Invited to Know One Another
Each week we pause on a verse that speaks to the life of the ummah — a moment of stillness between the headlines.
The verse is among the most quoted in the Quran, and perhaps among the least understood.nn”O mankind, We created you from a single pair, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may come to know one another” — al-Hujurat, 49:13.nnThe key word, in Arabic, is li-ta’arafu: that you may come to know one another. It is a purpose clause, a statement of divine intention. The multiplicity of human peoples — their languages, their customs, their foods and songs and ways of marking time — is not an accident to be overcome. It is the design. The design asks us to cross it.
